Past Is Not Prologue For House Gop

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July 24, 1997|By Marianne Means, Hearst Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives Republican plotters who failed to oust Speaker Newt Gingrich should have taken a lesson from history and copied the last congressional Grand Old Party revolt, a 1965 sneak attack that anointed Gerald Ford as House minority leader.

But the anti-Gingrich gang lacked what Ford and his allies had - a cohesive, long-range strategy and an obvious heir-apparent.

The Ford episode is instructive as an example of how successfully to overthrow an entrenched but unpopular leader who still has powerful weapons at his command but has lost the confidence of his troops. It was also an historically significant event, positioning Ford to move on to the vice presidency and then to replace Richard Nixon as president.

If there is to be a second effort to dump Gingrich, as seems possible, it cannot succeed if it is as haphazard as last week's weird attempt.

The aborted coup against Gingrich was doomed because it was sloppily conceived and involved a handful of rebellious members who didn't trust each other or communicate well and were driven by conflicting motives. The plotters had no reliable leader, no patience and no sense.

And they couldn't count. They had no idea how many Republican votes they could rally in a crunch against Gingrich; most GOP House members weren't even clued in to what was going on.

The rest of the top leadership was or was not actively involved, depending upon whose version you believe, along with fewer than two dozen youngish right-wing dissidents who have little claim to speak for their moderate, older colleagues. The scheme, in fact, had so little GOP support that it relied upon an assumption of Democratic help in any floor vote, which would probably not have been forthcoming.

After all, the Democrats like having Gingrich, the nation's most unpopular politician, to kick around.

By contrast, Ford and his allies organized their coup in a businesslike way, slowly building support over two years with the promise of a forceful, positive agenda that could appeal to GOP members of varying philosophies.

The Ford plot began for the same reason the anti-Gingrich plot did: There was widespread concern about the party's fate in coming congressional elections in an era dominated by a forceful Democratic president.

The Young Turks opposed Minority Leader Charles Halleck less for perceived ideological shortcomings than from a generation-based conviction that he was an ineffective, old mossback.

But a secret preliminary poll of GOP members in 1963 showed the plotters that an open revolt against Halleck would fail. So the rebels took an intermediate step, leaving Halleck alone but successfully running Ford for the secondary post of Republican Conference chairman, in which he could accumulate his own power. In public, they denied any personal animosity toward Halleck, but in private they were planning ahead.

In the 1964 election, President Lyndon B. Johnson demolished GOP nominee Barry Goldwater, and House Republicans incurred a net loss of 38 seats. Party officials panicked.

Although Halleck did not seem to notice anything amiss, the younger House members began meeting again and talking of revolt. After considering other potential candidates, they agreed that Ford could appeal to moderates and liberals as well as conservatives and would be the strongest challenger.

The key plotters numbered about 30; each was assigned compatible colleagues to recruit over four weeks. Careful nose counts were taken. By the time of the post-election GOP leadership caucus, they knew they had the votes.

By contrast, the anti-Gingrich folks don't appear to have given a great deal of serious thought to the implications of what they were doing. Dumping a speaker in mid-term out of pique is a much tougher proposition than upsetting the party congressional boss at a regular leadership meeting, as Ford did.

Ford and his allies were men of boundless energy and ambition, as are the Gingrich plotters. They were conservative - but they were more willing to form coalitions to achieve legislative goals than are the current crop of right-wing rebels. This group today seems more interested in a kind of ideological purity that would be inappropriate for a House speaker.

This is, of course, the television-dominated frantic 1990s, not the relatively innocent 1960s. But some political truths are eternal. One is: ''Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.''